FitBit review: Using a new fitness tool

Last year, some of our staff were awarded prizes for their exceptional work within Blenheim, going above and beyond to help our service users achieve their goals.

Complete-IT kindly donated FitBits to the winning staff and volunteers. Below, Andrew Kavalierou tells us how he got on with his…

I would consider myself quite an active person and one who trains regularly. I am also quite vigilant around food and enjoy training hard. I regularly run on the road and use my gym.

The gym I use has a fantastic boxing section and is situated above a charity that works with young people in my local community. It suits me and my character; I have been involved in this for many years and love it. I coach in the evenings with young people from the youth centre and gym too, so I consider myself active!!!!

I will never use a commercial gym, it’s not me. I like the spit and sawdust elements of boxing, so when I was given my FitBit as a present via Blenheim, whilst grateful, I thought how on earth will this benefit me? It is hardly spit and sawdust is it? Running around with a tracker, looking at my step and miles counter obsessively, I don’t think so. So it was with some reservation that I tried the new ‘fad’.

I quickly realised that I have some patterns which are not great for me. I always knew this but it becomes easy to spot with the app. Yes I am active, but it is also in phases. I will train and run for 12 weeks normally and then rest for about a month, sometimes taking my eye off the prize food-wise in between. Also at 39 and being obsessed by beating my own timings and records, having a month off to rest can make initiating training again difficult both mentally and physically. I also am not boxing competitively at any level at the moment (I’ll never say never!), so training with no fight date can seem pointless and demotivating sometimes.

So what impact has this FitBit had on me? It’s been fantastic! I can honestly say that I gave it a go in full awareness I was unconvinced, but I’m still using it! I can say my fitness and training is not as gruelling, is much more consistent and I am loving it even more because the recording has made me train smarter and with an added awareness.

I set myself a goal of training six times a week, which may sound a lot but is much less than my previous mad and intense training regime. Instead of running and training at the boxing gym in a single day, which could be 12-14 sessions a week, I limit myself to one activity per day. I also add and monitor my water intake and food which I find is more or less an accurate guide. Sleep is also an area I can neglect but I now have a reminder for this and on the whole seem to respond to the goals I set myself.

So resistant though I was (even though being gifted the FitBit was fantastic), it has had a positive effect. I train more consistently, sleep much better and resent putting Walkers crisps as a food entry, so eat better too. I’m largely kinder to myself now and more hydrated! That is also without taking into account the step reminders and various other elements that you can monitor and set as a reminder or goal.

The best part for me is I feel better physically and have been feeling sharper mentally too. I still run an awful lot but not excessively and I enjoy it more, as well as loving that I have more energy in the boxing gym to train at what I love. I guess it can be an obsessive tool for some but I think as I was resistant and a bit sceptical I have learned to slowly use it as a tool and not be attached to it every other minute.

Like most things in my life I guess it is about making it work for me. This is probably the first time my reservations have worked out well for me in the long run! FitBit Power!

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